On Friday 01 February 2008 18:58, Donovan Arnold wrote:
<snip>
> I am almost 34, and I have never voted in an election that didn't have
a Bush or Clinton on the ticket, and never voted in an election where one
of those two didn't win, even when the popular vote didn't go their way.
Things that make you go hummmm. . .
I read your frustration and disappointment with a mixture of empathy and
concern for repair of our system of choosing national leaders. It is true
beyond any reasonable deniability that the United States of America, and
several thousand of its business corporations, operate through a financial
and political oligarchy that is systemically self-serving and
self-perpetuating to the detriment of members of economic and political
classes that are increasingly disallowed voices at decision-making venues.
As I have mentioned before on this list, significant reform of the financing
methods and processes for federal election campaigns is one prerequisite
for materially modifying our existing system of governance relationships.
I mention this again because it is clear that cash flows toward federal
decision-makers, and campaigners for federal office with substantive
likelihoods of success, have had significant successes in retaining in
office recipients of those cash flows. So, from the vantage point of the
ruling oligarchy, it is no surprise that Bushes and Clintons are still near
the top of the national leadership network after a third of a century.
However, as the minstrel sang, the times they are achangin'.
No, the financing system is not changing, not yet, at least. If anything, in
this election cycle, it is pushed even more toward oligarchy preservation.
Look at the unprecedented amounts of money that have been raised by the
experienced thinker-achiever candidate Clinton and the newcomer
charismatic-feeler candidate Obama. Both candidates are centrist with
respect to the majority of the electorate, and neither is likely to violate
seriously the wishes and wants of the nearly-omnipotent oligarchy.
The reason the times are changing is that for the first time in the nation's
history there is a serious likelihood that a woman might be elected Chief
Executive and Commander-in-Chief. Women form a majority of the electorate,
which is not to imply that they will all vote for Hillary, of course, but
the majority of women are certainly paying close attention to what Hillary
says and does not say. If, for a majority of women, familiarity with HRC's
positions is tantamount to accepting those positions, candidate Clinton has
achieved a powerful boost toward the Oval Office.
Just a bit of William Shakespeare may be appropriate here. “There is a tide
in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it
serves, or lose our ventures.” -- William Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_
So, even though you may be tired of the oligarchic continuity, there is this
election cycle a powerful new force with which to reckon, and which, on the
basis of numbers alone, may be insurmountable by its opponents. That the
younger and less-experienced Obama might be swept into vice-presidential
office on her rising tide, there to rest for on-the-job training, and then
be returned to sea in a subsequent election cycle, only to be swept back
into higher office in his own right, is a set of strategic calculations
that even a relatively inexperienced political ensign might calculate would
lead, longer-term, to more battle victories and war success.
Ken